Cosmological Constraint from the 2dF QSO Spatial Power Spectrum

Abstract

In this paper we obtain constraints on the cosmological density parameters, \Omega_m and \Omega_b, by comparing the preliminary measurement of the QSO power spectrum from the two degree field QSO redshift survey with results from an analytic technique of power spectrum estimation, described in this paper. We demonstrate the validity of the analytic approach by comparing the results with the power spectrum of an N-body simulation. We find a better fit to the shape of the QSO power spectrum for low density models with \Omega_m= 0.1-0.4. We show that a finite baryon fraction \Omega_b/\Omega_m=0.2, consistent with observations of the CMB anisotropies and nucleosynthesis, fits the observational result of the 2QZ survey better, though the constraint is not very tight. By using the Fisher matrix technique, we investigate just how a survey would be required before a significant constraint on the density parameters can be made. We demonstrate that the constraint could be significantly improved if the survey was four times larger.